While trying to recover from the events of the first film, Mike Schmidt (played again by Josh Hutcherson) attempts to console his younger sister, Abby (played again by Piper Rubio), who wants to return to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria and help her ‘friends’ (the spirits possessing the animatronics), even though Mike believes they’ve moved on. One night, Abby is contacted by her friends asking for help, leading her to an older version of Freddy’s that houses more technologically advanced models of the Fazbear gang. With Mike and Vanessa (played again by Elizabeth Lail) realizing something is off, they learn that Abby wasn’t lured by her friends, but rather a vengeful spirit named Charlotte (played by Audrey Lyn-Marie), a child who was murdered by Elizabeth’s serial killer father, William Afton (played again by Matthew Lillard) who wants to kill in retaliation for her untimely death. Using these different versions of Freddy, Bonnie, Chicha, and Foxy to cause chaos on the outside while using Abby as a means of escaping the building, Mike and Vanessa will need to quell this spiritual threat before the entire town is massacre by familiar faces with a new coat of paint.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2 isn’t an evolution of its predecessor and fails to remedy its obvious faults, with even its minor improvements not being enough to make it a good film. It still has solid production value and imagery, amazing robotics work, capable direction, and some passable performances, but the shoddiness of the storytelling and script is too much to ignore.
Taking inspiration from the second game released in 2014, this sequel was in a more comfortable position than the first, as while never at risk of flopping given how massive the brand is, the first film only survived thanks to diehard fans, who helped it reach nearly $300 million at the box office as the rest of the world were at best apathetic and at worst, hated the film for its clunky storytelling, stilted acting, and very poor script.
With more confidence and a higher budget, the next movie had the chance to fix these criticisms as well as improve upon what people actually enjoyed, but not only did this sequel fail to weed out the problems, but it feels like the creatives didn’t learn from past mistakes, actively doubling down on the messy storytelling and abhorrent script without the wiggle room that it was previously attempting to streamline a very confused source material.
It should’ve been clear things wouldn’t be fixed since the creator of the games, Scott Cawthon, was the sole screenwriter on this movie, as now with complete control and no one else to bounce ideas off of, his inability to construct a clear narrative is on full display and leads to disaster. Better known for drip-feeding seemingly innocuous information at random rather than actually telling a story, Cawthon’s script does contain some interesting pieces that make it different from the first but is executed in such a haphazard and aimless fashion that newcomers will be befuddled and long-timers will question its strange decision-making.
Emma Tammi continues to prove she’s a good horror director, as the film is well visualized, occasionally has good scene work and build up, and when combined with the enjoyably creepy aesthetic and flexible tone, the movie is functional when not interrupted by terrible dialogue, story threads that get abandoned on a whim, and a barely stable narrative that jumps from point to point without ever fully coming together.
The first film can be generously viewed as ambition without foundation, and that can be felt the most within the scripting and performances, as while some were solid enough to feel stable, most felt pretty pedestrian, and even though time has allowed for some improvements in this field, the character writing has only gotten weaker. Josh Hutcherson is a great talent who’s able to survive with this material surprisingly cleanly, yet has such a flimsy purpose in the story that it’s hard to tell what he’s meant to truly do, Elizabeth Lail has gotten mostly better as Vanessa and has the start to a good story about dealing with the regrets surrounding her murderous family, but is taken in a weird direction that doesn’t feel very satisfying, and Piper Rubio has also improved and is given more screentime and agency, yet doesn’t have much of a story or even personality to back it up.
The film continues to waste Matthew Lillard and has also done so with Skeet Ulrich, who plays a character who should be pivotal to this universe, yet only has a single scene to spew out exposition. The supporting cast are little more than cannon fodder, but they can at least proudly say they ironically provide better performances than the leads. It’s nice to see Wayne Knight back in a film despite playing a very stock antagonist, Mckenna Grace is positioned as an early victim but is given more than expected and does so quite effectively, Freddy Carter is stuck with a laughably lame role who doesn’t even try to hide his intentions (his faces looks sculpted to be evil), but it’s hard to criticize him for pulling it off, and Megan Fox, Kellen Goff, and Matthew ‘’MatPat’’ Patrick as the voices of these new ‘toy’ versions of Chica, Freddy and Bonnie are pretty good, even if they don’t have that much personality to stand as memorable horror characters.
The one thing that most can agree on with the first film was that it was very visually pleasing. This wasn’t only through the animatronics created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, but also the overall production design, as it nicely captured the 80s-tastic pizzeria vibe the series has become notorious for emulating, and it’s nice to see this sequel took that to heart and kept things up to par. The production design by Marc Fisichella doesn’t feel as eye-catching as the first, but still captures the coloration, iconography and overall feel of the series and location nicely enough to still have a personality, and with some very nice camera work from Lyn Moncrief who knows how to provide dynamic imagery in a way that doesn’t take people out of a moment, it still offers a nice looking feature in spite of the limited spectacle.
While it was already stellar to see the original animatronics brought to life with such size and believable mechanics in the first film, the upped budget really helps make these more polished and toy-esque models look distinct but still contain that familiar characterisation synonymous with this brand, and continues to prove how talented Jim Henson’s Creature Shop is when it comes to bringing life and presence to creatures not normally seen with humanoid attributes. The movie is still heavily weakened by the lack of a scare factor (it’s almost funny how unscary this series is), but the ways in which it works around its PG rating to still offer some gruesome kills is admirable at the very least.
Five Nights at Freddy needed an upgrade, but this sequel wasn’t the installation it needed to wipe clean its faulty wiring, and even if some of the bugs have been patched out, the main corruption hasn’t been removed (and the programmers don’t seem invested in fixing it fully). While critically panned to an even greater extent, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2 will probably still do fine at the box office given its strong opening, even if people will probably not cut it slack again after proving they’re going to stick with what they know rather than acknowledge the problem. Some things are still tolerable like the production value, the directing and even some of the performances have improved, but the terrible scripting, confused storytelling, and laughably poor scare factor makes this a franchise that if not better looked after, will run the risk of being shut down in the future.
